Rehabilitation

What can you expect on your first visit to the clinic?
We spend at least an hour listening to you and trying to understand how you got to this point and how pain is impacting on your life and others. Everyone’s story is different and there is usually a history of trauma (but not always), failed treatments and frightening metaphors (your spine is degenerating, you have arthritis in your knee and it will get worse and the ‘classic’ you will be in a wheelchair soon!).

What do we measure?
We measure your pain levels, how they vary and how it affects your life during functional activities. At the start we will establish aims and goals for the treatment and give you an idea of how long improvement will take. This is different in every case and it is not uncommon to see people who have had chronic pain for 20 years.

A full physical examination will help identify which structures are affected and how you ‘compensate’ for the pain. We limp and move our body in a way that minimises pain, but we then learn this pattern and we are set to continue in this way ( for example, you break your leg and the fracture heals but you still continue to limp because this is your new movement pattern).